Analog-to-digital converter,
(ADC)
Dr Chinmayee Dora
Analog-to-digital converter (ADC)
• Analog to Digital Converter, or ADC, is a data
converter that allows digital circuits to
interface with the real world by encoding an
analog signal into a binary code
• The Analog-to-Digital Converter, (ADC)
allows micro-processor controlled circuits,
Arduinos, Raspberry Pi, and other such digital
logic circuits to communicate with the real
world. Sensors which can measure sound,
light, temperature or movement, etc.
Electronic circuits can interact with their
environment by measuring the analogue
signals from such transducers.
Analog and Digital Signals
• Analog Signal: An analog signal is any continuous signal for
which the time varying feature of the signal is a
representation of some other time-varying quantity i.e.,
analogous to another time varying signal.
• Digital Signal: A digital signal is a signal that represents data
as a sequence of discrete values; at any given time it can only
take on one of a finite number of values.
Working of Analog to Digital Converter
Inputting Analog Signal
• An analog to digital converter takes an analog signal as input. The analog
signal could be a voltage, current, temperature, pressure, or any other
physical quantity that changes continuously with time.
Sampling
• At this stage, the analog to digital converter samples the input analog
signal at regular intervals of time. These time intervals are defined in terms
of sampling rate.
• In the sampling process, the analog signal that varies continuously over
time is measured at discrete instants of time to collect discrete values of
the signal.
Quantization
• Quantization is a process of assigning a digital or discrete value to each
sampled value of the analog signal. In the process of quantization, the
range of all possible analog values is divided into a finite number of
discrete digital values.
Encoding
• Encoding is a process of converting the quantized digital values into their
equivalent binary numbers. These encoded binary numbers represent the
sampled analog values in the digital format.
• The resolution, accuracy, and precision of the analog to digital converter is
determined by the number of bits used for encoding.
Outputting Digital Signal
• At the end, the analog to digital converter produces a digital signal as
output. This output digital signal can be processed, stored, or transmitted
by digital systems.
Analog Digital
Sample
& Hold
Quantization
fsample
FLASH TYPE ADC
• Flash type ADC produces an
equivalent digital output for a
corresponding analog input in
no time. Hence, flash type
ADC is the fastest ADC.
• The 3-bit flash type ADC
consists of a voltage divider
network, 7 comparators and a
priority encoder.
The working of a 3-bit flash type ADC is as follows
• The voltage divider network contains 8 equal resistors. A reference voltage VR is applied across
that entire network with respect to the ground. The voltage drop across each resistor from
bottom to top with respect to ground will be the integer multiples (from 1 to 8) of VR8VR8.
• The external input voltage Vi is applied to the non-inverting terminal of all comparators. The
voltage drop across each resistor from bottom to top with respect to ground is applied to the
inverting terminal of comparators from bottom to top.
• At a time, all the comparators compare the external input voltage with the voltage drops present
at the respective other input terminal. That means, the comparison operations take place by each
comparator parallelly.
• The output of the comparator will be ‘1’ as long as Vi is greater than the voltage drop present at
the respective other input terminal. Similarly, the output of comparator will be ‘0’, when, Vi is less
than or equal to the voltage drop present at the respective other input terminal.
• All the outputs of comparators are connected as the inputs of priority encoder. This priority
encoder produces a binary code (digital output), which is corresponding to the high priority input
that has ‘1’.
• Therefore, the output of priority encoder is nothing but the binary equivalent (digital output) of
external analog input voltage, Vi.
• The flash type ADC is used in the applications where the conversion speed of analog input into
digital data should be very high.